Thanks a lot. I've been experiencing the same problem as many others as well. :-( Not only by clicking on Company Credits, but just searching for an individual company (production, distributor or whatever) also sends me direct to IMDb Pro. Once again, thanks a lot. :-)

I mean, they're now all redirected to IMDbPro pages. What the hell is up with that, is it some kind of broken link error, or another dumb site update? These company-related pages are supposed to be informative and tell people which works the companies are involved with.

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Company Pages.

I've been an IMDB user for years. I had always used the 'character' pages to find upcoming and past films. So I am really sad to see that go. But I was feeling okay, because I have always used the company pages to do the same thing.

So today, when I clicked on a company page and was directed to IMDBpro (which I am not a member of) I was a bit confused. Why aren't the company pages free anymore? I love IMDB but it is increasingly becoming less useful to me.

Sorry for the lack of clarity on our part here, the issue with title/companycredits is indeed fixed and the redirection was an accident.

Unfortunately as part of https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/upcoming-changes-to-several-imdb-features-du6man1opd5q0 the old company filmography pages are deliberately now only available on IMDbPro. The company filmography pages were served from our old software platform which is being retired shortly. The complexities of trying to tie company credits across different branches and subsidiaries is not something we can easily represent within the consumer focused main IMDb.com website, sorry.

In keeping with the Get Satisfaction announcement referenced in the previous paragraph, over the long term, if we cannot do something properly, simply and consistently across all IMDb consumer web site and mobile app platforms, we are (mostly) no longer going to do it at all. Company filmography falls into this category and is now only supported on IMDbPro as it is more of an entertainment industry focused feature in any case.

IDMB is rippping us off now by putting certain detals of producitons and distributors which used to be free on IDMB Pro where i have to pay $149.99 per year or $19.99 per month all i want to know is what other movies these companies have made i i should not have to pay for that

Unfortunately as part of https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/upcoming-changes-to-several-imdb-features-du6man1opd5q0 the old company filmography pages are deliberately now only available on IMDbPro. The company filmography pages were served from our old software platform which is being retired shortly. The complexities of trying to tie company credits across different branches and subsidiaries is not something we can easily represent within the consumer focused main IMDb.com website, sorry.

In keeping with the Get Satisfaction announcement referenced in the previous paragraph, over the long term, if we cannot do something properly, simply and consistently across all IMDb consumer web site and mobile app platforms, we are (mostly) no longer going to do it at all. Company filmography falls into this category and is now only supported on IMDbPro as it is more of an entertainment industry focused feature in any case.

Unfortunately as part of https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/upcoming-changes-to-several-imdb-features-du6man1opd5q0 the old company filmography pages are deliberately now only available on IMDbPro. The company filmography pages were served from our old software platform which is being retired shortly. The complexities of trying to tie company credits across different branches and subsidiaries is not something we can easily represent within the consumer focused main IMDb.com website, sorry.

In keeping with the Get Satisfaction announcement referenced in the previous paragraph, over the long term, if we cannot do something properly, simply and consistently across all IMDb consumer web site and mobile app platforms, we are (mostly) no longer going to do it at all. Company filmography falls into this category and is now only supported on IMDbPro as it is more of an entertainment industry focused feature in any case.

I know that but I was just saying you can already view some of the companies filmography for free it's only when I click on see past television or films the sign-up thing comes up it would be nice to see all the company filmography for free on IMDB pro

While I do thank you for your honesty, it's worth mentioning that you have just eliminated many of the reasons I use IMDB in the first place. I used the company pages to help me find many of the upcoming films, including many older films that I would not have known about otherwise.

I understand nothing can be done about this, but as a user (and not just a browser) this is very unfortunate. As you say, many of the features are a decade old, but many of us have been here using ALL Of those features for that decade.

I am sad to see these features go, but again thank you for your honesty.

Thanks for the feedback -- we are interested in your use case here so we can look at alternatives. Would you mind giving some examples about how you have used the company filmography pages to make viewing decisions or find films?

Specifically, if I go to "Walt DIsney Pictures" company page, I can find titles that have no cast or even writers attached to them yet. I admit that I have many films in my watchlist that are not due to be released for many years. But certain titles which may not be released for years may spark my interest. Honestly, they give me something to look forward too.

Titles like "Untitled x project" are also found under company pages, and depending on what the 'x' stands for, they can also spark my interest.

Also, under companies which are much smaller, like "The Asylum" - I know, they're so bad but they are a guilty pleasure - often the only way I was ever to come across their new titles was through their company page on IMDB. Their Wikipedia page is unreliable and often they don't update their Youtube until it is time for the film's release.

At the moment advanced title search at http://www.imdb.com/search/title just supports eight companies. We are looking at supporting all companies and then linking the company names across IMDb to the corresponding search. Does this sound okay?

There are movies, shows and games in which civil service agencies, film commissions, libraries, hospitals, foundations or organizations of varieties of other kinds are credited: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Navy. Air Force, Coast Guard and National Air and Space Museum, for instances. The filmography information is not easy to find elsewhere, and searching for it via a web search engine will most certainly produce false positives very frequently. It's not hard to understand what the problem with changing the system around is. By all means, please expand the functionality of the Advanced Title Search, but understand that in the mean time, you're depriving non-Pro IMDb subscribers, some of whom have helped build your site up.

Thanks for the honesty, too. But I am a user, and I have also worked in the IT business for more than 20 years, and witnessed its evolutions: methods, technologies, focuses, capabilities, etc. And therefore I do not understand how you can let go things like this. Obviously IMDb is now aiming at serving the US movie industry. Period. How can you expect to rely on free collaborative input so Amazon can make money with the accumulated data?

The good news is that you are giving away some room for authoritative alternate film data sources, more interested in the universal film history and culture and accuracy. IMDb may be big but its relevance is getting questioned by each new annoucement. As pointed out but several senior users lately, you are not too big to fail...As fas as I am concerned, as long as flat files with the present full data sets will be available, I will keep on contributing. Then I will be very sorry to turn the page.

Thanks for the honesty, too. But I am a user, and I have also worked in the IT business for more than 20 years, and witnessed its evolutions: methods, technologies, focuses, capabilities, etc. And therefore I do not understand how you can let go things like this.

Obviously IMDb is now aiming at serving the US movie industry. Period. How can you expect to rely on free collaborative input so Amazon can make money with the accumulated data?

The reverse is true -- one of the reasons for deprecating the old systems is they are not remotely compatible with our international expansion plans, and are holding us back from being less US focused. We have a whole section and experience dedicated to India as covered on https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/imdb-india but it is only available in English because of some of these old system limitations.

As fas as I am concerned, as long as flat files with the present full data sets will be available, I will keep on contributing. Then I will be very sorry to turn the page.

We are making more data available, updated more frequently and in a format which makes it easy to parse and process. You do need to be a contributor for the full set but we consider this a reasonable requirement. Please see https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/imdb-data-now-available-in-amazon-s3 (in S3 at the moment but we are working on a solution over http for early 2018 as mentioned in the thread).

The manner of the upgrades is mainly designed to accommodate the lowest common denominator of client platforms that exist. It would seem that, save for the advanced search tools, anything that cannot be available through the IMDb app for mobile devices (or for stuff like Roku units and video game consoles) will not be available through the IMDb conventional website. What has been done with the IMDb API, in its transition from the FTP sites to the Amazon Web Services' S3, is largely a joke. The quantity of types of data have been reduced rather than expanded. Contributors have complained about all these things, and have gotten either nearly zero feedback or lame excuses.

I cannot get to any data of TV or movie production companies previous works - titles I used to get in the past over Imdb.Every name I try I end up on the pro subscription site. Is Imdb trying to scare all its users away?No one will pay their monthly fees for something you can look up over Google.Best.p-o-a-h

I just came home after visiting my family for weekend. But as a faithful member of the IMDb, I don't want to become a member of IMDb Pro just for the company credits. Company filmographies have been one of the biggest reasons I use IMDb since I signed into the site for the first time, and how it's become now, I will not be able to find out what company made "this" and "that" movie anymore thanks to the IMDb Pro. I refuse to see that change being permanent, and I'm not alone on this. I see many contributors and ordinary IMDb users have been complaining about this since the problem began.

And what about the non-member visitors who just wants to look up at upcoming and previous movies coming from companies like Twentieth Century Fox, and instead they have to register themselves and become members of IMDb Pro just for that. The same if anyone would like to look up to rare companies like JC Films [mx], extinct companies like Edison Manufactoring Company, and animal rights groups like PETA.

And not all people have enough money to become a member of that IMDb Pro.

I'm sorry, but I think this leads to more frustration among the users. So I ask any of the IMDb staff to please make the company filmographies free again, and remove the IMDb Pro redirection, not only for my sake, but for all of the IMDb users as well.

However, this is just my opinion, and I'm sorry if I sound little bit harsh on some parts of my comment. It's just the fact I'm concerned on behalf of the IMDb users who've also been using company filmographies like I've been doing. And if the IMDb Pro redirection remains permanent, then I feel like I'm going crazy.

Okay, thank you for your reply. By the way, as someone who's been using IMDb since the mid-2000s, I'm okay with several of the other changes as already announced on https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/upcoming-changes-to-several-imdb-features-du6man1opd5q0, and I'm happy the IMDb will do anything to make improvements for their users, and grow the site's content. It was just now, right here, for the company filmographies, I and many others had to put my feet down on the floor and speak out, since as of now, I and the other users can only search for titles, people and some other stuff, not companies unless we become IMDb Pro members. Besides from everything I've said, I agree with the other Get Satisfaction members on all the other opinions and reasons mentioned, prior to my comment.

I use the IMDb a lot, mainly for fun. And I like to contribute on the site by adding new titles or extra content on existing titles. Speaking of companies, I've been using companies like JC Films, Fernsehen der DDR, MarVista Entertainment, Xces Film, Paramount Pictures, PETA, MPAA, and many more. It was through that kind of searching I've been finding many movie titles I haven't known about, and it was through MarVista I've got to know about "Kiddo the Super-Truck", which I streamed several days ago, just to make an example. The same with searching for titles and directors unheard for me.

So for the time being, I cross my fingers for the company filmography to become free again, and lots of the other features to remain free, even with the new software system. Then I, along with other users and contributors, will be enjoying the site to the fullest again like before. And I don't use any program like AdBlock on the IMDb.

Thanks for the extra details on your usage. We have taken another look at this and the best way to build this with the new system would be as a search result. We already offer limited company searches on the advanced title search page at http://www.imdb.com/search/title so for example, wherever we reference "20th Century Fox" on the site, the company name would be linked to the corresponding search results, as in http://www.imdb.com/search/title?companies=fox

The same would apply for all companies, so in your examples, companies like JC Films, Fernsehen der DDR, MarVista Entertainment, Xces Film, Paramount Pictures, PETA, MPAA etc. would be linked to their advanced search results similar to Fox.

It may feel kinda unusual for me in the beginning, since we've been used to simply write a company, click, and we're right on the company. But I guess I may give it a chance. The limited company search as it is temporarily seems like a nice step further in the new advanced search results, so getting to search on all of the thousands of the other companies right there would be a great fun as it was before with the old software system. But I will let you know if something comes up in my heart and mind regarding this. Give us a message when this change is about to be completed, as I feel kinda excited about this. :-)

It appears as if this is an old bug that has been solved in the past. As of today, I can't get a list of films that A24 or Sundance has distributed; instead I'm offered an opportunity to sign up for Pro. This happens whether I'm clicking on a link on a film's main page or searching for the company.

"If we cannot do something properly, simply and consistently across all
IMDb consumer web site and mobile app platforms, we are (mostly) no
longer going to do it at all. Company filmography falls into this
category and is now only supported on IMDbPro as it is more of an
entertainment industry focused feature in any case."

It's clear to me (as a former coder) that there will be non-zero work involved with the search solution, and significantly more work to restore the original functionality. IOW, what "simply" here means, is *inexpensively*. Hence the "(mostly)" qualifier -- you decide which features are worth retaining and which are not worth the effort.

I'm rather boggled that you would regard this as something you can punt.

Having some links on the main page direct to Pro -- completely disrupting the user experience -- is itself
inconsistent. It's textbook bad user interface design. That it's *mostly *
of interest to pros is a terrible justification. You don't put a key link in the corner of the screen because that's mostly problematical for people with slow visual search. You want to accommodate all your users.

That it looks
like it was done out of *corporate greed* makes it even worse. Those of us who routinely look at
company data will admittedly get used to using whatever search solution
you come up with. But what about casual users of the corporate links? What about the film buff who comes home from
seeing The Disaster Artist, recognizes A24 as the distributor, and has a
vague memory that they also distributed one or more of Lady Bird, The
Florida Project, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Good Time, and A Ghost
Story? And now they're curious about the company. When they try to
verify their vague memory at IMDB in the most obvious way, by clicking
on the A24 link on the Disaster Artist page, they're going to be asked
to sign up for Pro. Now they have to either sign up for a trial, or back out of the sign-up dialogue box and try Wikipedia for the info. Really?

Secondly, company data is still data. Where does your data come from in the first place? There is no U.S. distributor listed for the
recent, highly acclaimed indie film Columbus. Google says it was
distributed by the Sundance Institute, but BoxOfficeMojo has the
distributor as "INDEPENDENT," one of a handful of films with that
credit. Is the latter an actual distributor, or BOM's catch-all when
they don't have the data, either? I did not attempt to research the
possible distributors involved because I'm a movie professional (although I do get The Hollywood Reporter for free because of my helpful reviews as IMDB and Amazon), I did so
because I AM DEDICATED TO IMPROVING THE DATA AT IMDB for the benefit of
OTHER USERS.

If you make it frustratingly hard to update the database ... people are going to stop doing so.

I'm interested in the ATS by Company, for companies beyond the current 8.

My interest is in old movies, and I want to be able to pull a list of musicals produced by RKO (or Republic, or any studio with credits here.)

If I request silent films produced by MGM, I don't want to get Douglas Fairbanks silent films produced by United Artists. (MGM acquired UA inventory a while back.)

I might also want to pull by distributor at some point. For instance, I've watched several indie produced films distribute by Grand National back in the day, which makes me want to isolate their titles to search for others. But this is much lower on my wish list than searching by production co.

The current data policy still combines the UA and MGM titles under MGM so a search for MGM would return all titles. However, the richer model for companies on IMDbPro means we could look at separating the two company filmographies on IMDbPro, and instead using the company relations data to connect the two listings. This is turn would separate the results as you desire on advanced title search. This will not be top of the priority list in 2018, but it will be easier to do than if we had retained the company credits pages on IMDb.com.

Seriously, I'm sick and tired of these pages redirecting to IMDbPro pages and now I miss reading the company filmographies. I don't need to pay to read the filmographies, I want to read them for FREE. Can you PLEASE hurry up and move the URLs and pages back?

How is Col Needham's suggestion better in any way, shape, or form? I use IMDb extensively to look up company histories and now that feature is completely gone (except for the six or seven big companies already offered). Looking for the output of a small studio? Sorry, you're out of luck unless yo pay IMDb. Ridiculous.

Col, have you all thought about maybe dropping the pro price about 85%. If you were charging 25.00 a year, the number of subscribers would obviously increase immensely and I would wager the revenue actually increase. Is the 150 rate to try to limit the audience on the pro site?

The thing is, IMDbPro is intended for individuals and organizations that have a high-resource (or high-financial) stake in matters and persons related to published works of the videographic vein. IMDbPro is designed to rescue a smaller population than the overall general public of the world from that segment's "industrial" woes. Naturally a company would want a slice of the rewards involved in the stakes, or to at least not be bothered by "amateurs" or non-serious people like slackers. On that note, there should be bulk access deals between IMDbPro and film schools, kind of like how Microsoft provides MSDN materials to universities, for whatever fee, or likewise with IEEE and SAE, perhaps a student discount.

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Company credits.

Who came up with the brilliant idea to make basic company information (like what films a company produced, not contact information/financial data etc.) available only to IMDb Pro members? And in the same way removing the simple lists which gave a quick overview of the company credits? For God's sake, please stop these useless changes...

No, it does not sound okay. The advanced search example you gave is not going to replace company filmographies, because it's not restricted by function, so the search result brings up hundreds (or thousands) of thanks and miscellaneous credits as well as production ones. This makes it completely useless. And is there really going to be search support for every obscure film company from the 1910s or 1920s? When? 5 years from now?

This is a terrible change and it's just one more terrible change. When you closed the message boards you said that it wasn't one of the core functions of the site, the core function was to be a film database. But what sort of database takes away the ability to cross-reference the data?

This change not only reduces functionality and greatly reduces the usefulness of IMDb, but it makes it very difficult (if not impossible) to add, check, correct and delete company credits. The only solution I can see is just not to bother submitting them anymore.

Please count me as another person who would prefer that when one does a search for "pixar" under Companies, and gets a list such as the one at http://www.imdb.com/find?ref_=nv_sr_fn&q=pixar&s=co, one should be able to click on Pixar Animation Studios [us] and see a list of films for which that company is credited. The company filmographies should not be restricted to IMDbPro users, and while they should be accessible via Advanced Title Search, that should not be the only way to access them.

I understand if the software which serves the company filmographies needs to be reprogrammed. However, if it is technically possible to serve the company filmographies on IMDbPro, then it ought to be technically possible to serve them on the free site too, at least after the reprogramming has been completed.

"The complexities of trying to tie company credits across different branches and subsidiaries" may be difficult, but if they are a software problem, then that problem either is being resolved for the Pro users, or it isn't. If it's being resolved for the Pro users, then it can be resolved for the free site users. From that point, it's just a matter of what IMDb chooses to allow to the free site users.

Thanks for the feedback. The problem is the complexity of re-introducing another top-level page type vs. the amount of traffic the company pages were receiving on the consumer IMDb site. We are trying to thoughtfully simplify the IMDb software and customer experience so we can continue to move quickly and reduce bugs and inefficiencies. You have seen how bad things can get when we do not do this and so we are finished with the old approach!

Of course, it is possible to rebuild dedicated company pages, however, this would mean fewer resources to dedicate to enhancing the more core parts of IMDb. Search is already a core part of the site and something we are stepping up in 2018, so creating a virtual company filmography page via search is our preferred approach. Remember also with company data fully integrated into search, it means other sections which likewise use search can benefit from filtering by company name. It's win-win as they say :-)

@Col,I just wanted to chime in: the company search will only be truly useful if we can distinguish between Production vs. Distribution companies. And that is the only way you would truly replace the (now former) filmography pages with the search function, and truly score that double win.

Col, the only way this works is if clicking on a company link brings you to the appropriate search page. That is an acceptable solution. The less work a user has to do once they are redirected to the search engine, the better, but I can understand that if very few users actually click on the company links, it's probably not worth your time to write code to make it easier. So if I click on A24 and am brought to a search page (opening in another tab if I control-click) where I can either type in A24 in a text box or (better) click to put a check mark next to "A24," that works fine.

What you absolutely cannot do (as I explained earlier in the post with all the upvotes that is, coincidentally I'm sure, the post you didn't respond to) is ask people to join IMDBPro every time they click on a company link. That reads like begging for money to access data that you have advertised as free (and which in some cases was provided to you for free).

While we're improving search, the search by genre absolutely has to have a "[ ] Films in any of these genres (OR)" versus "[ ] Films in all of these genres (AND)" option. I might want a list of all sci-fi, fantasy, and horror films, but I might also want a list of romantic comedies -- which is decidedly not the same as a list of all romances OR comedies.

Like a lot of ordinary users I came on this change by chance. First time i thought it was a bug. Then I wanted to look up all the films produced in the 1970s under the American Film Theatre banner. I hadn't found this thread at that time so I looked at Wikipedia and their data looked pretty accurate. I certainly wouldn't join IMDBPro to look at this and am baffled that the click takes you to what is an ad instead of taking you to the search page. Another half thought through change.

How long do we have to still wait for this new IMDb system and the new company filmography link pages to be made and complete? Me and the movie guys can't take this madness and wait anymore! We want our new company filmography link pages now! Waiting too long is freaking killing us!! We regular IMDb users can't afford IMDb Pro!!! ﻿

What is taking so long to fix those film companies' filmography links pages?!? I am so sick of seeing IMDb Pro ever time I click on a company name. I know you guys are adding a new system to IMDb, but I cant take this any more! I want to see a film company's filmography to help me. I want to know if there is way I can see a company's filmography without being asked to apply to IMDb Pro now please. If this whole problem is not fixed, I am going to spend less time IMDb.

It's been a while when I talked with Col Needham about the company filmography stuff, but I agree with you about the topic. I will still use the IMDb as good as everyday as the faithful user I've been for years, but it's just the fact I'm becoming sick of just searching for titles and people. I'm so looking forward to the day when the rest of the companies become available on the advanced search, along with the eight major companies already offered, and if that happens, that will be better than nothing. Just my opinion.